Private
Barbara Jones
(1912 - 1978)
Study for Man and his Senses, c. 1966-71
Sold
Barbara Jones (1912 - 1978)
Size:
Height – 56cm
Width – 35.5cm
This composition is closely related to one of Jones Recording Britain watercolours in the collection of the V&A.
And another watercolour in the collection of RAF Hendon:
There is no record of how Jones, still in her twenties, became involved in the Recording Britain Scheme but she was one of the first artist’s to be commissioned and its most prolific contributor.
Recording Britain was the brainchild of Sir Kenneth Clark, who saw it as an extension of the Official War Artist scheme. By choosing watercolour painting as the medium of record, Clark hoped that the scheme would also help to preserve this characteristic English art form.
Recording Britain was intended to boost national morale by celebrating the country’s natural beauty and architectural heritage, but it was also a memorial to the war effort itself. The earliest pictures show the landscapes of southern England which were under immediate threat from bomb damage and invasion; in due course the remit was expanded to include those landscapes, buildings and ways of life that were vulnerable to the destructive forces of progress’ ‚Äì urban expansion, housing developments, road-building and so on.
The scheme employed several women, notably Barbara Jones and Enid Marx. Both were fascinated by English popular art ‚Äì everything from fairgrounds and follies to topiary and inn signs ‚Äì and both continued to record these ‘unsophisticated arts’ after the war.
Works for Recording Britain, which numbered over 1500 watercolours, were widely exhibited during the war years. In 1949 the Pilgrim Trust gave them to the V&A.
Barbara Jones first attended art school in Croydon (1931’33) before
winning a scholarship to the Royal College of Art (1933’36), where
she met painter Cliff Barry whom she married in 1941.
A prolific and varied artist, during WWII she worked with
the Pilgrim Trust on the Recording Britain series, making one of
the largest contributions of the 63 artists taking part. She wrote
and illustrated books on design history, many of which are today
considered seminal, including The Unsophisticated Arts, 1951 and
Design for Death, 1967.
In 1951, she organised the Black Eyes and Lemonade: Curating
Popular Art exhibition held at the Whitechapel Gallery for the Festival
of Britain. A fellow of the Society of Industrial Artists from the same
year, she was made vice president in 1969. She was also a fellow of
the Royal Anthropological Institute and a member of the Society of
Authors. A retrospective exhibition of the contents of her studio was
held at Katharine House Gallery, Marlborough, in 1999.
With thanks to artbiogs.co.uk
